Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1890 — TEMPERANCE COLUMN. [ARTICLE]

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

A UNIQUE AGITATION. Father Ziegler; of ’ St Malachy’s Church, St Louis, has instituted an effective temperance campaign by boycotting the drinkers. He has obtained the names of the> meh of his parish who drink, and placed this list in the hands of a committee of sixty women, many of them wives of the men on the list. These bibulous husbands were informed by trembling wives that unless they straightway reformed their names would be read by Father Ziegler from the alter. Great as was the consternation among these married sinners, it was nothing compared with that among the bachelors on the list. The young ladies have entered with spirit into the plan, and the least suspicion of a young- man’s, faithlessness to the pledge, is visited with the boycott. Young men vie with old ones in -"swearing off,” and the crusade which was at first laughed at, is accomplish! ing great good. " . ALCOHOL IN HOSPITALS. '* The cost of alcoholics prescribed in infirmaries promises tQ prove an element for good in the non-alcoholic medications problem. Some thrifty Britons have been feeling that the liquor bills for these institutions were a heavy burden upon tax-payers, and, to test the matter, Aiderman Stephens, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, has collected statistics upon this point from sixtyseven hospitals and infirmaries in the TJnited’ Kingdom. Tbo average cost per patient for liquors varies from 7s. IOJd. in a small infirmary at Elgin, to nil, as given in the records for the London Temperance Hospital, where, ..with 753 patients, not a farthing is expended for alcoholics. Next to it stands the great Swansea hospitall with 3,952 patients, where the average expenditure per patient per year is only one and three-fourths pence. Had it prescribed the same amount of alcoholics for each of its patients that Elgin did, its liquor bill would have been over £1,500, instead of £27. It is well, says a contemporary that taxpayers are beginning to ponder these figures; when they go a step further and learn the fact that the death rate in the hospital which uses no liquor is from four to twelve per cent', less than in those which do use it, the day of medical drunkard-making in hospitals is past. NOTES. TheW. C. T. U. of East Washington, alway alive to the best Interests of the work, is utilizing the Northwestern f Industrial Exposition being held in Spokane Falls. The laidies have secured space there and ordered fifty dollars’ worth of temperance literature which is being distributed continually. The Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in session lately, passed the following reso. lution unanimously: "Resolved, That we endorse and congratulate the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union on its Christian character, its arduous labors, its marvelous succes in manufacturing temperance sentiment, and in the growing blessing of the Lord that rests upon it.” , The official returns of liquor consumed in the seven Canadian provinces furnish a good illustration of the result of prohibition by the' Scott act. In Prince Edward Island, entirely under the act, the per capita consurffption of liquor is three-fourths of a gallon. In New Brunswick, where nine out of fifteen counties are prohibition, it is one and a half gallons: in Nova Scotia with elven out of fifteen counties the, per capita is one and three-fourths gallons: and so the ratio goes on increasing in inverse ratio to the number of counties under prohibition, till in British Columbia, which is entirely under license, the consumption is ten gallons per capita. The Southern Star, of Atlant, invites the National W. G, T. U Convention to an excursion to Indian Springs, Ga The Constitution says there is a project on foot toesta dish a great inebriate asylum at those springs whose waters are said to possess the peculiar property of making it impossible to drink them and whisky at the same time. A writer in the Constitution says*. "No matter how strong a hold the whisky habit has on man, iet him but commence to drink this Indian Spring water, and the desire for whisky is gone. And se 1 say, this is pre-emi-nently the place for a great e for inebriates, and the National Woman,s Christian Temperance Union is, of course, the one body that can make such an institution a success.